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Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine.
This book examines representations of monstrous women in horror films through a psychoanalytic framework, with a focus on the complex construction of women as abject, castrated, and castrating figures. Annotation Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge, 1993. Print. Quotes and Notes ...from Introduction “The female monster, or monstrous-feminine, wears many faces: the amoral primeval mother (Aliens, 1986); vampire (The Hunger, 1983); witch (Carrie, 1976); woman as monstrous womb (The Brood, 1979); woman as bleeding wound (Dressed to Kill, 1980); woman as possessed body (The Exorcist, 1973); the castrating mother (Psycho, 1960); woman as beautiful but deadly killer (Basic Instinct, 1992); aged psychopath (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, 1962); the monstrous boy-girl (A Reflection of Fear, 1973); woman as non-human animal (Cat People, 1942); woman as life-in-death (Lifeforce, 1985); woman as the deadly femme castratrice (I Spit On Your Grave, 1978).” (1) Vagina dentata --> a vagina ringed with or filled with teeth that will castrate a man upon penetration. The horror film [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teeth_(film) Teeth] uses these images. Otherwise, think about the monster-moms in the Silent Hill series. There is a focus on the mouth in some way. Either something is being pushed into the mouth (as with Amnion) or the close up on the mom boss always shows the screaming mouth (as with Helen Grady). Phallic mother --> a mother figure who possesses, embodies, or displays a phallic image/metaphor. For example, a woman carrying a cane or, as Creed points out, the image of the witch as having long fingers and a long nose. They become images or symbols for the phallus. “It is not by accident that Freud linked the sight of the Medusa to the equally horrifying sight of the mother’s genitals, for the concept of the monstrous-feminine, as constructed within/by a patriarchal and phallocentric ideology, is related intimately to the problem of sexual difference and castrations.” (2) This is what Cixous argues against, saying that female writing and experience cannot just be summed up as an “anti-phallic” experience. It is something separate and different. The phallocentricity of Freud and early psychoanalysis takes away from women’s experiences and erases them under a male-centered and patriarchal system of analysis, casting them as simply an “other” to the male, reinforcing their marginalized, submissive, and oppressed position. “I have used the term ‘monstrous-feminine’ as the term ‘female monster’ implies a simple reversal of ‘male monster.’ The reasons why the monstrous-feminine horrifies her audience are quite different from the reasons why the male monster horrifies his audience…The phrase ‘monstrous-feminine’ emphasizes the importance of gender in the construction of her monstrosity.” (3) I hint at this idea in the "Random Notes" file when I compare "spidery" monster-moms in video games/movies to the monster from Papo & Yo. “He Lenne appears to believe that women should be represented only in terms of their ‘natural’ role in life. ‘Is it not reasonable to woman, who, in life, is both mother and lover, should be represented by characters that convey the feeling of a sheltering peace?’” (3) But that’s not ALL women/mothers are or can be. What of “bad” mothers? Would Lenne just have us ignore them entirely? “While it is true that there are fewer classic female monsters than male, it does not follow that these creatures are not terrifying or truly monstrous.” (4) “He B. Twitchell dismisses the female psychopath as ‘mannish’ which suggests he believes that ‘femininity,’ by definition, excludes all forms of aggressive, monstrous behaviour.” (5) So the “mom” in Psycho, because it is really Norman in drag, doesn’t count. What of Carrie or The Exorcist, as Creed mentions? What of the hypersexual female-gendered or female-reading monsters of Silent Hill (the nurses, Asphyxia, Amnion, etc.)? PS -- Speaking of Silent Hill nurses, I was just struck with the thought that nurses, as caretakers, become a kind of pseudo-mother. MOMS EVERYWHERE IN SILENT HILL! “Susan Lurie in her article, ‘The construction of the “castrated woman” in psychoanalysis and cinema’...Lurie challenges the traditional Freudian position by arguing that men fear women, not because women are castrated but because they are not castrated. Lurie asserts that the male fears woman because woman is not mutilated like a man might be if he were castrated; woman is physically whole, intact and in possession of all her sexual power. The notion of the castrated woman in a phantasy intended to ameliorate man’s real fear of what woman might do to him.” (5-6) Have a scanned copy of this article saved on my Google Drive “I will argue Part I that when woman is represented as monstrous it is almost always in relation to her mothering and reproductive functions. These faces are: the archaic mother; the monstrous womb; the witch; the vampire; and the possessed woman.” (7) Part II deals with woman as sexual being and potential castrator. ...from Chapter One “Julia Kristeva...suggests a way of situating the monstrous-feminine in the horror film in relation to the maternal figure and what Kristeva terms ‘abjection,’ that which does not ‘respect borders, positions, rules,’ that which ‘disturbs identity, system, order.’” (8) “...I propose to draw mainly on Kristeva’s discussion of the construction of abjection in the human subject in relation to her notion of (a) the ‘border’ (b) the mother-child relationship and © the feminine body.” (8) “In these films [Psycho, Carrie, The Birds] the maternal figure is constructed as the monstrous-feminine. By refusing to relinquish her hold on her child, she prevents it from taking up its proper place in relation to the symbolic. Partly consumed by the desire to remain locked in a blissful relationship with the mother and partly terrified of separation, the child finds it easy to succumb to the comforting pleasure of the dyadic relationship.” (12) “As a form of modern defilement rite, the horror film attempts to separate out the symbolic order from all that threatens its stability, particularly the mother and all that her universe signifies. In this sense, signifying horror involves a representation of, and a reconciliation with, the maternal body. Kristeva’s theory of abjection provides us with an important theoretical framework for analysing, in the horror film, the representation of the monstrous-feminine, in relation to woman’s reproductive and mothering functions.” (14) “Furthermore, when we begin to examine closely the nature of the monstrous mother we discover she also has a crucial role to play in relation to castration and the child’s passage into the symbolic order -- issues discussed in Part II in relation to the images of the vagina dentata and the castrating mother.” (15) ...from Chapter Two (Archaic Mother [Alien]) “One of the major concerns with the sci-fi horror film (Alien, The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Altered States) is the reworking of the primal scene, the scene of birth, in relation to the representation of other forms of copulation and procreation.” (17) So the Face-Hugger’s oral penetration with its tail as a “new form” of copulation (at least by reproductive standards) and the Chest-Burster as a new “birth” “The primal scene is also crucial to Alien as is the figure of the mother, in the guise of the archaic mother. The archaic mother is the parthenogenetic mother, the mother as primordial abyss, the point of origin and of end. Although the archaic mother, the creature who laid the eggs, is never seen in Alien, her presence is signalled in a number of ways. She is there in the text’s various representations of the primal scene, and in its depiction of birth and death. She is there in the film’s images of blood, darkness and death.” (17) “''Alien'' presents various representations of the primal scene. Behind each of these lurks the figure of the archaic mother, that is, the image of the mother as sole origin of all life.” (18) “When male bodies become grotesque, they tend to take on characteristics associated with female bodies; in this instance the Face-Hugger attaches to John Hurt man’s body becomes grotesque because it is capable of being penetrated.” (19) “Dadoun describes the archaic mother as: ‘a mother-thing situated beyond a good and evil, beyond all organized forms and all events. This is a totalizing and oceanic mother, a “shadowy and deep unity,” evoking in the subject the anxiety of fusion and of dissolution; a mother who comes before the discovery of the essential béance, that of the phallus. This mother is nothing but a fantasy inasmuch as she is only ever established as an omnipresent and all-powerful totality, an absolute being, by the very intuition--she has no phallus--that deposes her…’” (20) Quote by Mary Kelly: “In order to delay, disavow, that separation she has already in a way acknowledged, the woman tends to fetishise the child: by dressing him up, by continuing to feed him no matter how old he gets, or simply by having another ‘little one.’” (22) “Her archaic mother's all-consuming, incorporating powers are concretized in the figure of her alien offspring; the creature whose deadly mission is represented as the same as that of the archaic mother--to tear apart and reincorporate all life.” (22) “Ironically, these scenarios of death are staged within the body of the mother-ship, the vessel which the space travellers initially trust until ‘Mother’ herself is revealed as a treacherous figure who has been programmed to sacrifice the lives of the crew in the interests of the Company.” (23) “This is why the body of the heroine becomes so important at the end of the film...Various critics have debated the potential voyeurism of the final scene, where Ripley undresses before the camera. There has also been considerable discussion of the cat. Why does she rescue the cat and thereby risk her life, and the lives of Parker and Lambert, when she has previously been so careful about quarantine regulations? Again, satisfactory answers to these questions are provided by a phallocentric concept of female fetishism. Compared to the horrific sight of the alien as fetish object of the monstrous archaic mother, Ripley’s body is pleasurable and reassuring to look at. She signifies the ‘acceptable’ form and shape of woman. The unacceptable, monstrous aspect of woman is represented in two ways: Mother as an omnipresent archaic force linked to death and Mother as the cannibalistic creature represented through the alien as fetish-object. The visually horrifying aspects of the Mother are offset through the display of woman as reassuring and pleasurable sign. The image of the cat functions in the same way; it signifies an acceptable, and in this context, a reassuring, fetish-object for the ‘normal’ woman...Thus, Ripley holds the cat to her, stroking it as if it were her ‘baby,’ her ‘little one.’ Finally, Ripley enters her sleep pod, assuming a virgin-like repose. The nightmare is over and we are returned to the opening sequence of the film where birth was a clean, pristine affair.” (24) ...from Chapter Three (Possessed Monster [The Exorcist]) “Connections drawn in the film between feminine desire, sexuality and abjection suggest that more is at stake than a simple case of demonic possession. Possession becomes the excuse for legitimizing a display of aberrant feminine behaviour which is depicted as depraved, monstrous, abject--and perversely appealing.” (31) “The mother is gradually rejected because she comes to represent, to signify, the period of the semiotic which the paternal symbolic constructs as ‘abject.’ Because the mother is seen as effacing the boundary between herself and the child, the function of ritual becomes that of reinforcing separation. The ideological project of horror films such as Psycho, Carrie, The Brood and The Hunger, all of which feature the monster as female, appears to be precisely this--constructing monstrosity’s source as the failure of paternal order to ensure the break, the separation of mother and child. This failure, which can also be viewed as a refusal of the mother and child to recognize the paternal order, is what produces the monstrous. The possessed female subject is one who refuses to take up her proper place in the symbolic order. Her protest is represented as a return to the pre-Oedipal, to the period of the semiotic chora. The normal state of affairs, however, is reversed; the dyadic relationship is distinguished not by the marking out of the child’s ‘clean and proper body’ but by a return of the unclean, untrained, unsymbolized body. Abjection is constructed as a rebellion of filthy, lustful, carnal, female flesh.” (38) ...from Chapter Four (Monstrous Womb [The Brood]) Epigraph by Julia Kristeva taken from Powers of Horror: “But devotees of the abject, she as well as he, do not cease looking, within what flows from the other’s ‘innermost being,’ for the desirable and terrifying, nourishing and murderous, fascinating and abject inside of the maternal body.” (43) “Margaret Miles argues in her study of the grotesque that ‘the most concentrated sense of the grotesque’ comes from the image of woman because of her associations with natural events such as sex and birth which were seen as ‘quintessentially grotesque.’ She points out that in Christian art, hell was often represented as a womb, ‘a lurid and rotting uterus’ where sinners were perpetually tortured for their crimes. In the horror film the ancient connection drawn between woman, womb and the monstrous is frequently invoked.” (43) “In The Incubus a woman space traveller is raped by an alien creature. Again her period of gestation is brief. During this period she develops a hunger for raw meat and begins to murder and cannibalize the crew.” (44) “...emphasizing that woman, because of her reproductive capabilities, is not far removed from the world of nature. Her generative functions position her on the side of the abject.” (44) Monstrous Feminine The Brood Plate 8.jpg|"Plate 8 The horror of woman's animalistic procreative functions. Having licked away the afterbirth, woman holds her newborn infant (Samantha Eggar in The Brood). Of The Brood: “Frank figure gradually comes to realize that anyone who threatens Nola is murdered by strange midget-like creatures. When one dies an autopsy reveals that it is a child without teeth, speech, retinas, sex or a navel. According to the doctor, the ‘creature has never really been born.”...Frank discovers that the creatures are part of a ‘brood;’ its members are ‘children’ born of Nola’s rage. They are physical manifestations of her enraged psyche who have been born directly from her body.” (45) “The difference here of course is that Nola, compared to other women, conceives and gives birth to her brood alone...The implication is that without man, woman can only give birth to a race of mutant, murderous offspring.” (45) Interesting implications for single mothers; the ability to raise a child without a father figure or additional, masculine support/control. Honestly, this is a problem I have with what seems to be (from the readings I’ve done) a staple concept of psychoanalysis, which is that of a paternal figure/father as the only one capable of maintaining/creating symbolic order (rules, law, socially proper behavior versus the mother’s over-emotional, too-close-to-nature qualities which are part of the semiotic). Creed questions this, especially through the role of mother as defining clean/unclean bodies and when she is positioned as the castrator (not just the castrated “other”). She references Kristeva’s work on abjection and the “thetic” (analytical work on the space between the semiotic and symbolic) when discussing this. I think this is why I had such a problem with James Herzog quote from the end of The Monster Within. It doesn’t allow any fluidity and it essentializes roles based on gender. “From the time of Hippocrates to Ambrose Pare, it was generally believed that monstrous offspring were created by the maternal imagination.” (45) I believe Almond also mentions this ideology; blaming the mother’s “monstrous” or impure thoughts for the mutation or malformation of the baby Thought that was introduced in Intro to GWSS “Monsters are also thought to be sterile. Huet suggests this was to remove the possibility of granting legitimacy to the mother’s illegitimate desire.” (46) “By the nineteenth century, however, categories of normal and abnormal replaced that of the monstrous, and the monster in general was seen as a variation from the norm. The Brood ignores the modern explanation of the birth of monsters and returns to a more ancient notion in which the maternal desire was held as the origin of monstrosity.” (46) Not necessarily. Nola, as an angry female, is abnormal. She isn’t loving, warm, and compassionate like a true woman or mother is supposed to be, making her abnormality quite modern, though it does still resonate with ancient understandings of birth defects. Pathenogenetic birth as bestial and unnatural. The absence of the male in the relationship as particularly abject and abnormal. “The idea that woman should give physical expression to her anger is represented as an inherently destructive process. “ (46) “The mother’s offspring in The Brood represent symbolically the horrifying results of permitting the mother too much power. An extreme, impossible situation -- parthenogenetic birth -- is used to demonstrate the horrors of unbridled maternal power. Parthenogenesis is impossible, but if it could happen, the film seems to be arguing, woman could give birth only to deformed manifestations of herself.” (47) This can be seen in [http://monster-mothers.wikia.com/wiki/Morrison,_Toni._Beloved. Beloved] as Sethe and Beloved reflect each other and strive to mutually destroy each other (Sethe successfully does though for altruistic reasons, but Beloved attempts to ruin Sethe for vengeful purposes) Could Beloved be considered a parthenogenetic birth? Or at least her reincarnated version? She literally comes from the water, not even an actual body. Is she an embodiment of Sethe’s mourning and anger at the men who take over Sweet Home and rape her and “force” her to kill her own child. What of the fact that Beloved and (more fully) Denver are raised in a completely matriarchal sphere? Baby Sugs and Sethe raise the kids but her husband is left behind at Sweet Home, driven insane, and no other men occupy the house (except Sethe’s two boys who don’t really count, are barely mention, and leave as soon as they can) until Paul D. shows up and scares the baby’s ghost out of the house through a large display of anger. Though, does his presence bring about the physical formation of Beloved? He removes her spirit but Beloved seems to show up/physically manifest so that she can later (ultimately) boot Paul D. out of the house and maintain the matriarchal, isolated and fully female space. Only once Beloved has been removed again, this time by the women in the community, Denver, and Sethe herself (to an extent) does Paul D. return to the home and feel that he can really stay. “Kristeva’s theory of the abject provides us with at least three ways of understanding the nature of Nola’s monstrousness. First, Nola has the power to deny her offspring an autonomous identity...The second reason...her ability to give birth links her directly to the animal world and to the great cycle of birth, decay and death...The third way in which the womb suggests the monstrous relates to the definition of abjection in terms of inside/outside...The dichotomy of pure/impure is transformed into one of inside/outside.” (46-48) “Throughout, Aliens sequel opposes two forms of mothering: Ripley’s surrogate mothering in which there is no conception or birth and where the female body is unmarked; and Mother Alien’s biological, animalistic, instinctual mothering where the maternal body is open and gaping...However, it is not so much that Ripley is an ‘antifertility mother’ and that she and Mother Alien represent diametrically opposed principles of reproduction - instinctual and cultural...but rather that Mother Alien represents Ripley’s other self, that is, woman’s, alien, inner, mysterious powers of reproduction.” It is the latter, the female reproductive/mothering capacity per se, which is deemed monstrous, horrifying, abject.” (51) During Ripley’s self-sacrifice in Alien3: “A close-up shot reveals an expression of ecstasy on her face as she plummets backwards into the void. At the same time, the alien bursts forth. Ripley brings her arms forward, enclosing the infant queen in an embrace both maternal and murderous -- an embrace that ensures the alien will die alongside its surrogate mother...The close-up shot of Ripley’s face, with shaven head and expression of blissful resignation…is represented as a supreme sacrifice akin to that of an ancient androgynous god or religious saint...Despite her integrity and courage, Ripley/woman is betrayed by her body, unable finally to preserve her own flesh from contamination by the abject, alien other -- the monstrous fecund mother.” (emphasis mine, 52-53) In the same way that Rosemary cuts off her hair in Rosemary’s Baby when she learns she is pregnant, greeting motherhood as a large marker of femininity by parting with long hair as a marker of femininity, so Ripley shaves her head and becomes more androgynous as her pregnancy continues. The murder/suicide of Ripley and the alien baby is like many of the case studies from Meyers. Ripley cannot love the baby and realizes it must be destroyed, but doing so means she must also destroy herself. The monstrous baby makes the mother monstrous makes both worthy or destruction. A cover for the psychological “impossibility” of a mother murdering her own child. Saintlike sacrifice and murder or altruistic killing (as Almond and Meyers term it) as the only “acceptable” type of filicide or at least somewhat empathetic --> Think of Almond’s hesitation and anxiety admitted while approaching Beloved because the text has become some well known for its altruistic filicide and for making people feel for and better understand Sethe’s motives as a murderous mother Childbirth/babies as taking away ownership and control of a woman over her body. The baby/birth makes the female body/mother monstrous and abject. Think of the “Anatomy of a New Mother” comic by Carol Tyler and how these body changes are linked directly to the birth of her baby and are unglamorous, monstrous (in a zombie way), and abject. Backtracking to The Brood, I think it’s important to note that not only is the ability and way in which the mother gives birth abject but the sheer number of children she is capable of producing becomes abject, monstrous. That she continually pumps them out according to her need is repulsive as she cannot/does not fully and “properly” care for them as a good mother would. They are used as tools, they die quickly, and she does not love them, something which is a key marker of good mothering. The absence of a mother-child bond that is deemed appropriate and the dispensability of the children is repulsive and makes not only the “brood” monstrous, but also the mother that creates it. “The women who give birth to aliens or possess mutated wombs are not all active monsters like the witch or vampire.” (emphasis mine, 53) But passive, yes. The monstrousness of the baby reflects back on the mother, making her monstrous. Think of Rosemary and the ways in which she is held responsible for the well-being, protection, and “death” of her baby; and medieval thinking on birth defects. Consider the criminalization of women who have multiple children and then care for them “inadequately” or are selfish. “Baby greed” as Almond calls it. I believe in the notes on Almond, I referenced Octomom in this same context but the Creed reading adds a new dimension of abjection and monstrousness, particularly in relation to this movie. It could be said that the multitude of children Nadya Suleman (Octomom) has is similar to a “brood.” Her “use” of the children to gain fame (like anyone else with x-tets who gets a TV show or whatever, Jon and Kate for example) is criticized by some, as was her revealed dependence on governmental state support. The sheer amount of children she birthed, as well as her lack of ability to financial (and seemingly emotionally through a lack of time and energy in any one person) care for her children makes her seem repulsive and open to criticism. Though I don’t know Suleman’s racial/ethnic background, this reading and criticism by media and the public is heavy classed and typically racialized in very specific ways (largely aimed at Latina and African American single mothers). Beyond this, the nickname “Octomom” could be considered abject. Given that the close ties with nature and the animal world that women are said to have makes them abject, the name takes on an animal hybridity (octopus-mom) that may make Nadya out as a monstrous mother. Although, I don’t think was initially intended (indeed it just may have been the octo-/eight prefix to refer to the births), the way in which her hyper-extended belly has been oggled and judged as grossly large, it seems this may have switched a bit. Her body/the births could be constructed as “unnatural” (especially as they were the result of fertilization treatments/help), making her more readily abject and more readily identifiable with the animal world. Whenever I hear her name, it sounds like a superhero/villain title (like Aquaman or Sandman or Doc Oc), which makes me think of the animal hybridity aspect of the name. Regardless, I think it is definitely worth considering. ...from Chapter Five (Woman as Vampire [The Hunger]) “She is the cruel mother, the parent who nurtures her lovers/children in life and then keeps them in a state of living death. She represents the suffocating mother -- the mother who refuses to let go...Miriam represents the dead face of the archaic mother, the maternal figure whose fertility has dried up. She has no nourishment to offer.” (68) Like Almond’s definition of the vampiric mother. “In these scenes, she is represented as the devouring mother whose cannibalistic, incorporating desires are the other side of her possessive, smothering urges. When she is placed in a sexual embrace with another female vampire, the predatory/lesbian energies released lead to a fountain of blood. It is difficult to imagine two male vampires embracing in such a context, their abject nature defined in terms of an oral exchange of blood.” (69) Mother as separate and distinct from her sexual self. “In many vampire films (Dracula, The Vampire Lovers) the figure of Dracula is represented as pagan and the avenging fathers are Christian. Given that the pagan religions celebrated fertility and the power of the maternal body it would appear that this conflict is between these two opposing domains -- the worlds of the mother and the father.” (71-72) Father (symbolic order, cleanliness) versus mother (nature, abjection) ...from Chapter Six (Woman as Witch [Carrie]) “Barbara Walker points out that in many cultures witches had metaphoric names such as ‘herberia’ (one who gathers herbs), ‘pixidria’ (keepers of an ointment box), and ‘femina saga’ (wise-woman). In her role as mother, woman no doubt was the one responsible for developing early forms of herbal medicine. Joseph Campbell argues that women were the first witches and associated with teh powers of magic long before men because of their mysterious ability to create new life. During her periods of pregnancy, woman was seen as the source of a particularly powerful form of magic. The earliest knnown witches were feared not as agents of the devil -- as the Christian Church later argued -- but because they were thought to possess magical, terrifying powers.” (74) “Historically, the curse of a woman, particularly if she were pregnant or menstruating, was considered far more potent than a man’s curse. A ‘mother’s curse,’ as it was known, meant certain death.” (74) Head witch in Suspiria called Mater Suspiriorum (liguistic I think basis for the word “mother”) Lavezzo mentioned more specifics in a Pearl-poet lecture, look at those notes. “''Suspiria'' was the first of a trilogy of horror films planned by Dario Argento called The Three Mothers. The second is Inferno; the third has not yet been made. In the opening credits to Inferno, we learn that the world is ruled by Three Mothers: Mater Suspiriorum, Mater Lacrimarum and Mater Tenebrarum who represent sorrow, tears and darkness respectively. They are witches, ‘wicked step-mothers, incapable of creating life’ -- the voice-over at the beginning of Inferno tells us.” (77) “In some horror films the witch’s supernatural powers are linked to the female reproductive system -- particularly menstruation.” (77) Reproduction but also the destruction of the resulting product: babies/children. Think of Rosemary’s Baby and the use of infant blood and flesh that she fears so greatly. Also fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel where the witch cooks and consumes children. So not only is she abject in menarche, sex, and pregnancy/birth, but also her abuse of her mother capacity/power and by taking up “bad” mothering behaviors, including manipulation; abuse; murder, mutilation, or cannibalization of children; and an unloving relationship, or a lack of attachment or care for young and vulnerable children. “In the horror films discussed above woman is represented as monstrous in relation to her reproductive and maternal functions. This occurs for a number of reasons: the archaic mother (Alien) horrifies because she threatens to cannibalize, to take back, the life forms to which she once gave birth; the possessed girl (The Exorcist) evokes a pleasurable disgust because she confronts us with those abject substances (blood, pus, vomit, urine) that signify a return to a state of infantile pre-socialization; the pregnant woman (The Brood) horrifies because her body houses an alien being -- the infant/other; the female vampire (The Hunger) is monstrous because she draws attention to the female blood cycle and she reduces her captives to a state of embryonic dependency in which they must suckle blood in order to live; the young female witch (Carrie) evokes both sympathy and horror because her evil deeds are associated with puberty and menarche. The monstrous-feminine is constructed as an abject figure because she threatens the symbolic order...In conclusion, I wish to re-emphasize that I regard the association of woman’s maternal and reproductive functions with the abject as a construct of patriarchal ideology.” (83) ...from Chapter Seven (Little Hans case study revisited) A reinterpretation of Freud’s case study of a boy called “Little Hans” and his relation to and understanding of the “widdler”/penis/phallus of himself, his father, and his mother. “In my view, the plumber is Hans’s mother or at least her agent. She is central to the important elements of both phantasies: water, bathing, sexual pleasure, pain, babies, birth. As Freud mentions in a footnote, she always gives him his bath. She also gives Hans his enemas. She is in charge of the boy’s washing routines, cleanliness, daily ablutions. He is partly frightened of her powers over him and fears she may submerge him in the water. For this reason he refuses to sit or lie in the big bath but must kneel or stand. ‘I’m afraid of her letting go and my head going in.’” (102) ...from Chapter Eight (Medusa's Head and the Vagina Dentata) “One of the myths from New Mexico tells the story of how the boy hero known as Killer-of-Enemies domesticated the toothed vagina. There was once a house of vaginas where the four ‘vagina girls’ lived. The ‘girls’ were actually vaginas but had taken the form of women. Lured by stories of the vagina girls, unsuspecting men would come to the house for intercourse. Kicking Monster, father of the vagina girls, would kick the men inside to be eaten up by the vaginas who possessed exceedingly strong teeth. Outsmarting Kicking Monster, the boy hero entered the house where he convinced the four vagina girls to eat a special medicine made of sour berries. The medicine destroyed their teeth and puckered their lips so that they could no longer chew but only swallow. They found this approach far more pleasurable than the old method. In this way the toothed vagina was put to its proper use. The myths of North American Indians tell a similar story: a meat-eating fish lives in the vagina of the Terrible Mother; the hero is the one who overpowers her.” (106) Note the use of the terms “domesticate” and “overpower.” The notion that men must tame, control, and overrule women because they are otherwise too wild, aggressive, and sexual. This kind of ideology is present in lots of societies and time periods. Hercules dominated and domesticated an Amazon (through rape and sexual conquest). Janise Ian at the end of Mean Girls is tamed by her relationship with the mathlete. Women reduced completely to their genitals whereas the males in the stories are heroes with names and full, rounded characters. Quote by Lederer: “Darkness, depth, death and woman -- the belong together.” (106) “The vagina dentata is the mouth of hell -- a terrifying symbol of woman as the ‘devil’s gateway’.” (106) Think about Hellmouth and the discussion/parallel of Hell to a womb by the Pearl-poet and other authors from the medieval period. “Castration can refer to the symbolic castration (loss of the mother’s body, breast, loss of identity) which is experienced by both female and male, or it can refer to genital castration. The horror film offers many images of a general nature which suggest dismemberment. Victims rarely die cleanly or quickly. Rather, victims die agonized messy deaths -- flesh is cut, bodies violated, limbs torn asunder. In films like Jaws, Tremors, Alien and Aliens, where the monster is a devouring creature, victims are ripped apart and eaten alive. Where the monster is a psychopath, victims are cut, dismembered, decapitated.” (107) “Another visual motif associated with the vagina dentata is that of the barred and dangerous entrance. Lederer identifies ‘Briar Rose’ or the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ story, and its variants, as providing a perfect illustration of this theme. The suitors who wish to win Briar Rose must first penetrate the hedge of thorns that bars their way. Only the prince who inspires true love is able to pass through unharmed.” (107) “The fairy tale story ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ also suggests symbolically the vagina dentata with its reference to the red riding hood/clitoris and its emphasis on the devouring jaws of the wolf/grandmother.” (108) I never even thought of the grandma in “Little Red Riding Hood” as a monstrous transformation but it works. She is consumed by male aggression and “hunger;” she becomes a threat --> the wolf = the grandmother’s anger which cannot be compatible with a sweet, loving maternal figure. “Two explanations have been given for the vagina dentata -- both stress the incorporative rather than castrating aspect of this figure. One approach interprets the vagina dentata as a symbolic expression of the oral sadistic mother. This is the mother feared by both female and male infants who imagine that, just as they derive pleasure from feeding/eating at the mother’s breast, the mother might in turn desire to feed on them. The ‘Hansel and Gretel’ fairy story illustrates this infantile fear through the figure of the cannibalistic witch. The other explanation interprets the vagina dentata as an expression of the dyadic mother; the all-encompassing maternal figure of the pre-Oedipal period who threatens symbolically to engulf the infant, thus posing a threat of psychic obliteration. In both explanations, the image of the toothed vagina, symbolic of the all-devouring woman, is related to the subject’s infantile memories of its early relation with the mother and the subsequent fear of its identity being swallowed up by the mother. In horror films such as Psycho, Carrie and Alien, fear of being swallowed up, of annihilation, is linked directly to the mother.” (109) Could vagina dentata as an “incorporative” mechanism work in the sense that the mother, in castrating the son, incorporates him into her gender network or circle? Think about how Ms. Bates keeps Norman close by acting as a controlling and psychically castrating mother. I mention “Hansel and Gretel” in the notes on Carrie, also relating it to Rosemary’s Baby at that point. “Freud’s account of the boy’s first glimpse of the female genitals is worth noting in that the boy’s response differs in terms of the kind of female he is looking at -- young girl or adult woman. In ‘Medusa’s head’ Freud refers to the ‘terrible fright’ the boy experiences when he sees the mother’s genitals. In ‘The infantile genital organisation’ Freud describes the response of the boy when he first glimpses the genitals of a young girl as indifferent. Freud does not explore the significance of these two responses.” (113) “If the former experience (seeing the mother’s genitals first) is most likely to lead to a fear of woman as castrated, then the latter (seeing a young girl’s genital lips) seems most likely to lead to a fear of woman as incorporator/castrator. While both experiences may have the same effect of transforming woman’s body into a source of castration anxiety for the male, the forms of this anxiety are different and that difference is crucial to our understanding of the representation of women within patriarchal culture.” (114) “Freud claims that the boy’s acceptance of woman as castrated other and his consequent fear of castration for himself leads him to adopt one of two responses: ‘This combination of circumstances leads to two reactions, which may become fixed and will in that case, whether separately or together or in conjunction with other factors, permanently determine the boy’s relations to women: horror of the mutilated creature or triumphant contempt for her.’” (114-115) Both options seem incredibly misogynistic. “How much greater must the wound be to the boy’s narcissism when he realizes the constant vulnerability of his entire organ?...Perhaps there is a description of the boy’s feelings hidden in Freud’s account. Doesn’t the statement also make sense if read ‘against the grain’ as a description of how the boy imagines the woman might feel (‘triumphant contempt’) after she has castrated him (‘the mutilated creature’)? If we treat Freud’s statement as an instance of displacement -- understandable given the threatening nature of the topic -- we can understand him to be talking about woman, not as castrated, but as the castrator with the male as her victim.” (115) “It is possible that he might hold these opposing beliefs about woman alternately or even together. The image of woman as castrator and castrated is represented repeatedly in the mythology of all patriarchal cultures. She is either the tamed, domesticated, passive woman or else the savage, destructive, aggressive woman. The phallic woman is the fetishized woman -- an image designed to deny the existence of both these figures (woman as castrated/castrating). By enlarging the grounds for the male castration anxiety, we in no way invalidate Freud’s theory of fetishism. In his neglect of the actively terrifying face of woman, evident also from his analysis of the Medusa myth, Freud left untouched a crucial area of male castration anxieties.” (117) “It is the third reason in which he is most interested: ‘woman is different from man, for ever incomprehensible and mysterious, strange and therefore apparently hostile. The man is afraid of being weakened by the woman, infected with her femininity and of then showing himself incapable. The effect which coitus has of discharging tensions and causing flaccidity may be the prototype of what man fears.’” (119) “Throughout this essay, Freud avoids confronting the possibility that man’s fear of sexual intercourse with woman is based on irrational fears about the deadly powers of the vagina, especially the bleeding vagina. Rather than consider man’s dread of the imaginary castrating woman, Freud takes refuge in his theory of woman’s castration. While he acknowledges that it is man’s ‘generalized dread of women’ that leads to the setting up of taboos, he concludes that this dread has nothing to do with woman’s possible powers -- real or imagined. Instead he explains man’s fears in terms of woman’s lack of power. Perhaps one should conclude that acceptance of the notion of ‘woman the castrator’ rather than ‘woman as castrated’ is not only threatening to Freud as a man but also damaging to his theories of penis envy in women, the castration crisis and the role he assigns to the father in the transmission of culture.” (121) ...from Chapter Nine (Femme Castrice [I Spit On Your Grave, Sisters]) “In other horror films, woman is transformed into a psychotic monster because she has been symbolically castrated, that is, she feels she has been robbed unjustly of her rightful destiny. In Fatal Attraction, the heroine (an unmarried career woman) is transformed into a monster because she is unable to fulfill her need for husband and family. In a number of recent -- and very popular -- films about female psychotics, the killer is an outsider, a lone woman who murders to possess what has been denied her: family, husband, lover, child. In The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, she kills in order to possess a baby. The psychopath of Single White Female, who wants her room mate to take the place of her dead twin sister not only cannibalizes her friend’s personality, appearance and mannerisms but also tries to murder any man who stands in her way. Poison Ivy’s eponymous heroine sets out to eliminate a mother and daughter in order to possess the husband. In these films, woman’s violent destructive urges arise from her failure to lead a ‘normal’ life in possession of friends and family. This version of the female psychopath represents a more conventional view of female monstrosity in that woman transforms into a monster when she is sexually and emotionally unfulfilled. She seeks revenge on society, particularly the heterosexual nuclear family, because of her lack, her symbolic castration.” (122) Could the birth of an unwanted child be considered a way of “robba woman unjustly of her rightful destiny”? If in a nuclear family and the mother harms and kills her child, thus destroying the nuclear, “normal” structure of her household, would she be included? What of women who have a nuclear family or some token of ideal femininity (a child) who become aggressive or violent in this manner? What of women who destroy these tokens because they bind them and erase them as individuals rather than out of envy for them or a desire to obtain them? Does this destroy their femininity and position as castrated? She is still emotionally unfulfilled, not because she lacks these thing but because she has them. The possession of these things and the role of motherhood itself make certain emotions (anger, frustration, hate towards a child and/or an unsupportive and unhelpful partner, family, or community) impossible. It stunts the emotions, erases and invalidates them with the label “bad mother,” leading to an emotion unfulfillment of sorts. Or an emotional unfulfillment not from the bottling of anger/incapability to release it, but from a lack of support in raising the child or in dealing with the conflicting emotions that arise from having a child. OR does this make her castrating? “Whereas the castrated female monster is inevitably punished for her transgressions, the castrating woman -- usually a sympathetic figure -- is rarely punished...Usually the heroin takes revenge because either she -- or a friend -- has been raped and/or murdered by a single male or a group of men. In some films, woman takes revenge for causes other than rape: the reason, however, is almost always linked to some form of male exploitation.” (122-123) In our society, she doesn’t really get sympathy. Generally she is harshly judged. But can an argument be made that she is getting revenge on someone/something that has wronged or exploited her? In this I think mainly of single mothers whose baby daddies deny any responsibility for the child (Anne Lamott is one). Or even a married woman whose husband/partner takes on no domestic/child care duties, holding high expectations for the mother (Andrea Yates and the pressure from her husband Rusty to stay home, raise, educate, and push through severe depression and mental instability to do so). In being abandoned (in one way or another) her societal expectations as a woman and a mother are exploited. She cannot get rid of the child in any way without being judged as “bad.” Given her exploitation through patriarchal gender stereotypes, and the impossibility of escape without shaming, should she be sympathized with? Why can’t/Why doesn’t this happen? In this interpretive divide, where does the violent/murderous/monstrous mother fit? Can she be fit into one or the other? Or must we form an alternative category that is within or outside of the castrated/castrating binary? Can forced/overwhelming/unwanted motherhood without any social or emotional support be considered enough that it’s worthy of “rape revenge” consideration and sympathy? (Not that they are the same, equivalent, or that these situations can or should use a rape script. I just mean to question if it is enough of a violation of her body, space, desires, and self-identity that revenge against a child or uncaring/unhelp not necessarily abusive or “evil” partner can make sense and be justified? Is that enough of a wrong or injustice?) “It does this primarily by representing woman in the twin roles of castrated and castrator, and it is the latter image which dominates the ending in almost all of these films. Significantly, in his attack on the contemporary slasher film, Ebert began by deploring the victimization of women but concluded on a very different, somewhat defensive, not: ‘These movies may still be exorcizing demons, but the identity of the demons has changed. Now the “victim” is the poor, put-upon, traumatized male in the audience. And the demons are the women on the screen.’ Ebert’s lament suggests that horror films which deal with the female castrator are either reinforcing a view that woman is deadly and dangerous and/or they are playing on the spectator’s fascination with the relationship between sex and death -- particularly for the male.” (128) “Hardy, however, is critical of the way in which the heroine changes into an avenging fury: ‘by allowing her to lapse into an almost catatonic, silent obsessive, the film distances the viewer from her, making her seem like a mere cipher and pushing her dangerously close to that negative female stereotype, the all-destructive femme castrice (quite literally, as it happens, in this case).’” (129) “It is significant that the three rape scenes in the first half of I Spit on Your Grave are filmed in a completely different way from the revenge scenes of the second half. Whereas woman-as-victim is represented as an abject thing, man-as-victim is not similarly degraded and humiliated. If anything, the death scenes of the male victims offer a form of masochistic pleasure to the viewer because of the way they associate death with pleasure. (I am not suggesting, for a moment, that this inequality should be addressed by eroticizing the rape scenes.) The main reason for this difference stems from the film’s ideological purpose -- to represent woman as monstrous because she castrates.” (130) “Although the ideological issues are similar, the conventions of the horror genre allow the differences between the two sisters to be expressed in a more extreme and violent form than in the woman’s film: the Danielle figure is castrated, as suggested by the scar on her side; the Dominique figure castrates -- literally.” (132) Need to divide “womanliness” from anger/violence that reads as masculine. The films does this by splitting it into two people or personalities. It’s interesting to note that as formerly conjoined twins, they shared the same space and some of the same blood and body and that even surgery and heavy sedation/medication is not enough to entirely rid a woman of her “bad self” -- the angry and violent portions of her being. “While man’s castration is genital, woman’s castration is depicted as a separation from part of her own self and/or separation from another woman, her sister. In this scenario a part, but not all, of woman dies. This part constitutes woman’s active, aggressive, phallic self. The self that survives is represented as symbolically castrated through the image of the scar.” (132) Sethe and Beloved both have scars. Does this fit at all? “The film presents its notion of the castrated/castrating woman in relation to social and sexual definitions of what constitutes the proper feminine role for woman. For instance, Grace’s mother refuses to take her daughter’s career seriously; she calls it her ‘little job’, something to do before she settles down to the serious business of marriage and family. Emile falls in love with Danielle rather than Dominique presumably because she is, as we learn in the film from the director of the hospital: ‘So sweet, so responsive, so normal as opposed to her sister.’ The film’s representation of Grace emphasizes the sexist treatment of women in society….she ends up at home with her elderly parents where she is surrounded by toys and patronized like a child.” (132) “The memory is like a bizarre primal scene in which woman is depicted as a ‘double’ figure, only capable of sex if her twin selves are split from each other. The man is the aggressor who deliberately silences woman’s critical self in order to appeal to her ‘desire’ to be a wife and mother.” (133) “When Emile brings Grace back to the present he makes Danielle recall an episode in which she and Dominique were walking together in the garden and Dominique tried to kill her unborn baby with a pair of garden shears. Reference to the garden shears recalls an earlier scene, when Grace broke into the Institute and encountered one of the patients in the garden menacingly pruning plants with a large pair of shears. As she left, he snapped the shears at her as if warding off an evil demon. The shears have now been incorporated into Grace’s hallucination. Danielle then cries out that she is going to lose her ‘baby’. It is impossible to establish the status of this scene. Did it actually occur - as Robin Wood suggests in his analysis of the film? Or is it only part of Grace’s hallucination? Regardless of its status in relation to actuality, the ‘baby’ appears to represent Danielle’s desire for normality and proper womanhood. It is the desire which Dominique has destroyed and which, by extension, Grace wishes to destroy.” (emphasis mine, 133-134) The independent, active, sexual, and aggressive half (Dominique) wishes to kill the “baby” that will tie her down, limit her mobility, and assign her to a model/role which she does not wish to take on and which will effectively make her disappear into her “other half” (Danielle) “Grace is Dominique, that is, Grace represents the female castrator, the woman who refuses to adopt the proper feminine role...When Emile wants to make love to Danielle, he must put her ‘other self’, the one which is dangerous to man, to sleep. This is the price that Danielle must pay if she is to conform to the proper feminine role. She must not listen to her ‘sister’; she must permit herself to be cut off, symbolically and literally, from other women.” (134) “''Sisters'' explores the representation of woman as castrated/castrator while simultaneously playing on man’s inability to tell the difference. Is woman castrated or does she castrate? Does she use one persona to disguise her hidden and deadly face? What lies behind the veil? Robin Wood has described Sisters as ‘the definitive feminist horror film...among the most complete and rigorous analyses of the oppression of women under patriarchal culture in the whole of patriarchal cinema.’ While I am in sympathy with Wood’s general ideological approach, I cannot agree with his conclusion -- that the monster is women’s liberation and ‘the subject of Sisters is the oppression (castration) of women under patriarchy.’ There are at least two monsters in Sisters -- Emile and Dominique -- and the film, while presenting an analysis of the ‘oppression of women’, is also about man’s fear of woman as deadly castrator.” (emphasis mine, 135-136) “I would argue that the composite image of Danielle (castrated/proper woman) and Dominique (castrating/deviant woman) is not something that needs to be repressed in order to ensure the workings of patriarchal ideology. On the contrary, such a composite image, in which woman’s nature is represented as deceptive and unknowable, is essential to the proper functioning of such an ideology. It is represented continually within different signifying practices such as film, art, religion, pornography, literature, jokes, and colloquial speech. It is interesting, however, to note that the majority of critical and theoretical writing on sexual difference in the cinema have kept alive the image of the castrated woman while ignoring her alter ego, the castrating woman.” (136) “In Sisters woman’s desire to castrate man is related directly to her own earlier mutilation, separation and death of her active self.” (136) Fits really well with the thought of birth as a type of symbolic castration. “In the final sequence, Grace is transformed into a state of infantile dependency on her parents and Danielle/Dominique is arrested for Emile’s murder. As she is taken away, she says, as all good monsters do: ‘But I wouldn’t hurt anyone.’” (138) ...from Chapter Ten (Castrating Mother [Psycho]) “In recent years, feminist film theory has increasingly focused on the representation of the mother-child relationship, particularly in the woman’s film and maternal melodrama. Issues explored include repression (The Old Maid), sacrifice (Stella Dallas), incestuous desire (Mildred Pierce) and maternal incorporation (Now Voyager). Relationships in the maternal melodrama are almost always between mother and daughter; it is to the horror film we must turn for an exploration of mother-son relationships. The latter are usually represented in terms of repressed Oedipal desire, fear of the castrating mother and psychosis. Given the nature of the horror genre -- its preoccupation with monstrosity, abjection and horrific familial scenarios -- the issues surrounding the mother-child dyad are generally presented in a more extreme and terrifying manner.” (139) “The monstrous mother is central to a number of horror texts. Her perversity is almost always grounded in possessive, dominant behaviour towards her offspring, particularly the male child. Psycho, Fanatic and Friday the 13th represent the over-possessive mother as a dangerous psychotic...The mother as a dominating religious fanatic and bigot who destroys her daughter is explored in Carrie. The female psychotic of the extremely successful Fatal Attraction is ultimately shown as mad because of her voracious need to possess a child and husband. The castrating mother is central to Dario Argento’s Deep Red.” (139-140) “Norman Bates’s desire to become the mother is motivated not by love but by fear: he wants to become the mother in order to prevent his own castration -- to castrate rather than be castrated.” (140) Could this be extended from just castration anxiety to a general anxiety towards mothers as potentially violent? Think of your own obedience towards Mom after hearing that Andrea Yates story and fearing she would “snap.” “Once we become aware of the prevalence of the image of woman as castrator in the horror film, we can more easily recognize the signs of her presence -- cruel appraising eyes, knives, water, blood, the ‘haunted’ house.” (140) “Although similarly difficult to detect, the mother’s story in Psycho is crucial to our understanding of the representation of monstrosity in the text. The mother’s story, which is really about her ‘fate’ as a mother within a phallocentric culture, is interwoven with that of Marion, the younger woman. Both stories are related intimately with the son’s story and his problem with the body of woman -- is she castrated or does she castrate? In this sense the mother’s story is not really ‘hers’; it is ultimately the son’s story. Perhaps this is why Freud found the mother’s story so difficult to detect -- hers is always part of another story, the son’s story.” (141) The erasure of entire individuals under the label of “mother.” We are able to see the mother only through the lives of her children, their success and their failures, which is a result of our patriarchal society and expectations placed on women entering the realm of “motherhood.” In Psycho, Ms. Bates is literally killed and brought back to life by her son. He consumes and destroys her identity, absorbing it and making it his own. He takes all that she is (her clothes, her mannerisms, her speech, her body literally as he poisons and destroys it and then takes the corpse back from the grave, etc.) and leaves nothing except her role as a mother to him and how he perceived her within this role. Even Ms. Bate’s one attempt to have an identity outside of her relationship to Norman (to be a lover, not just a mother) is what gets her killed and stuck in this perpetual, constructed role as Norman’s mom. “Norman associates his mother with the deadly passivity of a monstrous bird of prey probably because she was the parent who hovered over him, watching his every move, threatening to pounce when he committed a mistake.” (143) I can’t think of any mothers as birds. In Coraline, Bedlam desires children’s eyes but herself has buttons (so the possessive, controlling, judgmental gaze of the mother doesn’t fit neatly). Although, she does know and see everything about Coraline’s life, enough to “correct” these flaws and create a perfect world (judges Coralines desires and dislikes). It still isn’t judgmental or predatory in the same way though (though Bedlam does hope to prey on Coraline enough that she may possess her eyes; links to the Biblical image of the crows pecking out the eyes of the two thieves crucified with Christ). Figure of the Harpy? Though they aren’t specifically maternal, just feminine (breasts and female heads). “Woman as monstrous is associated with bodily appetites, cruel eyes, a pecking beak.” (144) Focus on Sethe’s eyes after murdering Beloved; animalistic. “The shower murder is horrific because it presents us with a graphic, explicit, disturbing image of the mother carrying out the law, enforcing retribution. This scene awakens in the spectator an infantile fear of the castrating, punishing parent.” (148) “But, as I have argued, one of the main reasons for this excess of critical attention is probably that the shower-scene murder awakens our unconscious fears of the other as parental castrator. ‘Mrs Bates’ appears without warning, just at the moment when Marion is most enjoying the sensual pleasures of her body. In the Little Hans case study, Hans felt most vulnerable in relation to his mother at bath time and developed an anxiety that she might drown him in the bath. Children no doubt feel particularly vulnerable at this time not only because they are naked but also because this is the moment when they are likely to explore their body and/or engage in masturbation.” (149) Drowning makes me anxious because of the Yates case. There is a vulnerability in nudity but how does this affect girls? Fear of being “castrated” meaning shamed or disempowered in some other way than penile/phallic, physical castration? But how? “The grotesque image points symbolically to the kind of power that mother exerts over her son. In Norman’s case she is so powerful that he gives up his own identity. She is not an external, separate entity; she is part of the child’s inner self, the interior voice of the maternal authority. It is this dimension of the mother -- her enuclturating, moral function -- that has generally been neglected in critical approaches to Psycho, despite the fact that a major part of the film’s ideological and sexist project seems to be to demonstrate that, when left without a husband, the ‘true’ representative of the law, the mother is incapable of exercising authority wisely.” (150) The idea of women as “improper” punishers and symbolic leaders shows up not only in Psycho but also Carrie, The Exorcist, and The Brood. Basically any story involving a single mother or a matriarchal-structured family. I have expressed concern over this analysis earlier in my notes on this book and on Almond. Creed’s analysis of the mother as consuming the child in some ways compliments and in other ways contradicts with my above analysis of Norman’s relationship with his mother and the act of “becoming” Ms. Bates. My thought is the reduction of Ms. Bates to simply “mother” shows how the child shapes, changes, and overpowers any former life the woman may have had. The idea that the two personalities merge, that the mother and child come to reflect so much on each other, is similar but Creed assigns power and domination to the mother, whereas I assign power to the construction of motherhood and the child(ren) who gives a woman the label “mother.” Creed’s analysis seems to draw more from the personal psychosis in the character Norman whereas mine looks at the societal structures surrounding the role Ms. Bates fulfills. A more accurate “truth” would take both of these into account and find somewhere in the middle to settle. I’m finding it more and more impossible to separate the “monster mother” from the idea of the “monster child.” ...from Chapter Eleven “The representation of the monstrous-feminine in patriarchal signifying practices has a number of consequences for psychoanalytically based theories of sexual difference. On the one hand, those images which define woman as monstrous in relation to her reproductive functions work to reinforce the phallocentric notion that female sexuality is abject. On the other hand, the notion of the monstrous-feminine challenges the view that femininity, by definition, constitutes passivity.” (151) “Significantly, the horror film does not attempt to construct male and female in a totally different relation to castration -- both are represented (male literally/woman symbolically) as castrated and as agents of castration. However, this factor is not usually recognized in critical writings on horror; it is the male who is almost always described as the monster and the agent of castration, woman as his victim. The existence of the monstrous-feminine in the horror film also has important consequences for the way in which we situate popular cinema. It may be that the horror genre is more directly responsive to questions of sexual difference, more willing to explore male and female anxieties about the ‘other’, than film texts which belong to mainstream genres such as the detective, suspense thriller, comedy and romance films.” (152) “Clearly existing theories of spectatorship are inadequate: they do not help us to theorize the presence of woman as active monster in the horror text, her relationship to the characters in the diegesis, or the relationship of the spectators -- male and female -- in the cinema.” (153) “In those films where the male is the victim of the monstrous-feminine in one of her many guises -- witch, vampire, creature, abject mother, castrator, psychotic -- the male spectator, who identifies with his screen surrogate, is clearly placed in a powerless situation. Through the figure of the monstrous-feminine, the horror film plays on his possible fears of menstrual blood, incorporation, domination, castration and death. One of the most salient features of the horror film is that it does allow for an explicit representation of man’s castration anxieties in relation to his own body.” (154-155) “What is the appeal of the horror film to the female spectator? Does she recognize herself in the figure of the monstrous-feminine? To what extent might the female spectator feel empowered when identifying with the female castrator? Does she derive a form of sadistic pleasure in seeing her sexual other humiliated and punished? The answers to these questions are complex and vary from text to text. For instance, the female spectator might feel empowerment from identifying with the castrating heroine of a slasher film when the latter finally destroys the male killer. She may also feel empowerment from identifying with the castrating heroine of the rape-revenge film when the latter takes revenge on the male rapist...Given that the horror film speaks to our deepest fears and most terrifying fantasies it is -- as I have argued -- most likely that identificatory processes are extremely fluid and allow the spectator to switch identification between victim and monster depending on the degree to which the spectator wishes to be terrified and/or to terrify and depending on the power of the various filmic codes (subjective camera, close-up images, music) designed to encourage certain modes of identification above others.” (155) “One response to the castrating heroine of the horror film is to argue that she is actually a phallicized heroine, that is, she has been reconstituted as masculine. If female spectators derive pleasure from identifying with an aggressive or violent heroine it is because they have been contaminated by patriarchy. It is only the phallic male spectator who is empowered by identifying with an aggressive hero from the diegesis. This view appears to be based on the argument that only phallic masculinity is violent and that femininity is never violent -- not even in the imagination. This argument is essentialist, that is, it assumes that if women lived outside patriarchy they would never, as spectators, derive pleasure from identifying with acts of aggression on the screen. The feminine imagination is seen as essentially non-violent, peaceful, unaggressive. This is the very argument that patriarchal ideology has used for the past 2,000 years to control women -- it is precisely because women by definition are ‘pure’ creatures that they need men to ‘guide’ them through life’s stormy passage.” (155-156) “But I do not believe the unconscious is subject to the strictures of gender socialization and it is to the unconscious that the horror film speaks, revealing -- perhaps more than any other genre -- the unconscious fears and desires of both the human subject (pain, bodily attack, disintegration, death) and the gendered subject (male fears of woman’s reproductive role and of castration and woman’s fears of phallic aggressivity and rape).” (156) “When film critics draw attention to the motion of woman as powerful and dangerous they usually invoke the concept of the phallic woman, frequently referring to her as if she were the same figure as the castrating woman.” (157) “In the horror film this ambivalence has given rise to the representation of woman as monstrous because she gives birth and ‘mothers’. In this sense, every encounter with horror, in the cinema, is an encounter with the maternal body constructed (I am not arguing that woman is essentially abject) as non-symbolic by the signifying practices of patriarchal ideology. Woman’s abjectification is crucial to the functioning of the patriarchal order. ‘For without the exploitation of the body-matter of women, what would become of the symbolic process that governs society?’.” (166)